Encoding and decoding methods are described for example in publications concerning the MPEG-7 standard, in particular in document [1]. These methods allow the contents of the document, in particular elements and/or attributes and/or data types, to be determined with the aid of bit patterns in an encoded data flow. In this case, the encoded contents are stored in so-called FUU's (FUU—fragment update unit), in which the entire content of the element and/or attribute and/or data type need not be contained in the FUU. Parts of this element and/or attribute and/or data type can be encoded in subsequent FUU's.
The content of XML documents is frequently further processed by a recipient, and prepared for example for display. For this purpose, it is often the case that only specific elements and/or attributes and/or data types are filtered out from the XML document. The process of filtering can be specified for instance in a so-called XSLT (XSLT=SML style sheet language transformation).
According to the prior art, it has proven disadvantageous in applications for processing an XML document that in order to filter out contents, the whole document is decoded from the bit flow and is only then filtered. The filtering can be accelerated by way of technologies known from the prior art such that FUU's, which cannot contain the content to be filtered as a result of the information contained in the so-called context path of the FUU, are not decoded. It is however not possibly to reliably determine, on the basis of the context path, which FUU's actually contain the desired content.